by Lamia Karim, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, and Associate Director, Center for the Study of Women in Society

In 2009, I went to Bangladesh with a National Science Foundation research grant to conduct four months of ethnographic research among a group of women who belonged to a pietist movement known as Tablighi Jama’at. The Tablighi Jama’at is a global missionary movement that was started by Muhammad Ilyas in 1926 in India. It is a spiritual movement that seeks to bring Muslim conduct in line with the life and teachings of Prophet Muhammad. The movement seeks to create the golden age of Islam (Khilafat) through non-violent means, that is, by “invitation” (tabligh) to nominal Muslims to return to the fold. Its largest presence is in South Asia. With the migration of South Asians to North America, Europe, and Australia in the 1960s, the movement spread to all parts of the world. Today, Tablighi Jama’at is present in 150 countries. Bangladesh has a robust Tablighi Jama’at movement. Bishwa Ijtema, the largest gathering of the movement, is held annually in Bangladesh with over two million members from all over the world in attendance.

In recent years, women all over the Muslim world have increasingly turned to religion and morality, and have rejected Western ideas of liberalism, secularism, and materialism. This turn toward religion poses a challenge for feminists, many of whom view religion as a source of gender oppression. Anthropologist Saba Mahmood has argued in The Politics of Piety (2005) that religion offered women a form of agency that Western liberalism failed to deliver. Based on my research, I have come to different conclusions from Mahmood. I found that although piety was a factor, Bangladeshi women primarily joined the Tablighi Jama’at movement for economic and sexual security.

My research focused on the induction of women into the Tablighi Jama’at ideology through weekly instructions on its six pillars: kalima (belief in the oneness of Allah), salah (daily prayers), ilm and dhikr (remembrance of Allah and fellowship), ikraam–e-Muslim (to treat fellow Muslims with respect), ikhlas-i-niyaat (to reform and devote one’s life to Islamic ideals), and dawah (to preach the message of Allah). I conducted the research with two research assistants, one female and one male. The women we met were leaders in their group. They were college-educated and were drawn from the upper-middle classes. Because the movement emphasized one’s withdrawal from public life, it attracted wealthier women to join the movement as they had the wherewithal to dedicate themselves to a private life. The research was based on interviews with women, participation in their weekly seminars, and analysis of the sermons (boyans) that addressed Muslim women’s social roles and obligations. 

The central mosque of the Jama’at movement is located in Dhaka, the capital city. The mosque leadership directed all aspects of life of its followers. The central command at the mosque was made up of seven male leaders. All of the members were drawn from Quomi madrassah-educated clergy, that is, an orthodox school of Islamic interpretation. The mosque was organized around a strict hierarchy. All mosque communication was top-down. Members were not allowed to question the decisions of the leaders. Anyone who raised objections or critical questions would be asked to leave the group. This was a written rule of Tabligh leadership.

The leaders decided on the topics of the weekly sermons that were to be preached to the group members. The central mosque sent these sermons to the clergy at the local mosques. Hence, all across the country, all Tabligh members listened to the same sermon every week. The local preachers were not allowed to change the content of the sermon. There were separate sermons for women and men because men and women were seen as fulfilling different social roles. The women’s sermons focused more on the private aspects of life, especially with regard to a woman’s duty toward her husband, in-laws, and children. It also emphasized the importance of observing purdah for women, and the sexual conduct of Muslim women.

Within Muslim societies, there are divergent interpretations regarding sharia laws, but the Tablighi Jama’at follow an orthodox interpretation. In my conversations with women, it emerged that the women supported sharia laws to govern their private lives and rejected the notion of a Universal Civil Code that is advocated by Bangladeshi feminist groups. Yet, when probed deeper on the question of sharia, it became apparent that the women had little or no knowledge of sharia and its implications. For example, when women were asked if a woman was accused of infidelity, should she be stoned, they said, yes. When they were asked if a woman who had been raped and could not produce four male witnesses as required under sharia laws, should she be stoned for fornication, the women became uncertain. Some of the older women said they were not aware of this condition. Others said that it was a question for their mosque leaders, while some younger women found this requirement unacceptable. What emerged from these conversations was that the mosque leadership did not discuss sharia laws and their implications with the women. Instead, the women were told that sharia was “Allah’s Laws,” and they were expected to follow the interpretations of these laws as mandated by their mosque. The mosque leadership represented itself as the final arbitrator in all moral matters, and kept the women in ignorance through its hegemonic control over their social lives.

The social life of the women and their families was organized around the mosque’s teachings. The Tabligh followers wanted to replicate the life and times of Prophet Muhammad and the four Caliphs. Thus, in their homes, they eschewed furniture, and instead had carpets and cushions to sit on. TVs, radios, newspapers, and magazines were not allowed in their homes. The men had access to the media since they participated in public life; women, because they stayed at home, did not have such access to information. Social and sexual life was strictly regulated. The women wore simple clothes and always kept their heads covered, although some of the women wore substantial amounts of gold jewelry. Space was gender segregated. Husbands and post-pubescent sons would not come into a room if non-kin women were present. The giving and sharing of food, and hospitality toward strangers, was widely practiced within the community, an ideal they termed ikramm-e-Muslim. Within the group, richer families did provide for the poorer families, or helped them in times of distress. Overall, Tablighi Jama’at members had a sense of community and belonging that was absent in wider Bangladeshi Muslim society.

Women joined the movement primarily for two reasons, personal trauma (death of a family member) or through marriage. Many of these women were highly educated (up to the MA level in many instances.) In most cases, their husbands brought them into the movement. Following their induction, the women observed a strict code of Islamic bodily comportment in attire and attitude. A woman who had brought her husband, an ophthalmologist, into the movement, described her success in recruiting him as “I finally found peace.” When I probed deeper into this notion of peace, I discovered that she no longer worried about her husband examining the eyes of women as part of his professional duties. In Muslim societies, where women keep their bodies covered and show only the eyes, the female gaze is considered a source of enchantment. Her husband’s recruitment into the Tablighi Jama’at made her feel less insecure, both sexually and economically, because his behavior was regulated by strict Islamic precepts.

Women as mothers were in the vanguard of inculcating Tablighi Jama’at values to their children. Most of the women were stay-at-home mothers, and they primarily socialized with women in their group. Their sons were sent to madrassahs (Islamic seminaries) with the expectation that they would later join the clergy. This was no doubt an odd career choice in the twenty-first century. But as my male research assistant pointed out, the sons of the leaders within the mosque hierarchy received technological education and many went to the United States, United Kingdom, and mainland Europe to study. This educational divide resulted in a two-tier society: the religious technocrats who ran the leadership, and those with madrassah education who were the followers. While men were encouraged in business and technology, the education of young girls was restricted. Many of the women who had a college education themselves had withdrawn their daughters from schools and home-schooled them in Quranic studies. They were primarily raised to be “good” Muslim mothers for future generations.

Prior to the 1990s, women were not brought into the mosque movement. With globalization, there has been an increase in Islamic TV shows from the Middle East and Malaysia that cater to Muslim women by offering them varying Quranic interpretations and advice. Women’s access to global media alerted the male leadership to include the women in their mosque activities. Otherwise, they recognized that they risked losing their members to competing ideas about Islam. This resulted in the women’s mosque where women met weekly. This has ensured that the women remained within the interpretations of the Tabligh leaders and did not stray from the fold. Women were encouraged to form neighborhood committees so they did not have to travel out of their neighborhoods and encounter non-kin men. The women’s lives were organized around weekly mosque and neighborhood meetings. These neighborhood group formations allowed certain women to emerge as leaders within Tablighi Jama’at women’s groups. It also created a close network of women who monitored the activities of the women in these neighborhood committees. If a woman failed to show, especially if her husband was away on a religious tour, the other women in the group visited her home to find out about her welfare, offer her assistance, and also monitor her fidelity.

An important duty for male members of the movement is to spend a mandatory 120 days a year traveling away from home to spread the word of Allah. Because men were absent from their families for such long periods, it was important to include their wives in the movement. This ensured that other women in the group would look after their wives and children and also function as a surveillance mechanism. Similarly, women felt that because their husbands were devout men they were less likely to spend time with another woman or take a second wife while they were on their missionary work. In fact, during the 120 days of missionary work, the men travel together, stay in their mosques, and listen to regular sermons. Mosque activities keep the men busy and within the regulation of the mosque. I also found that poorer women joined the movement because marriages take place within the group and dowry is not exchanged. Often an older woman became the patron of a poorer woman and helped her get married. Marriages within the Tablighi Jama’at were inexpensive affairs that made it attractive for lower-income women to join the group. Thus, belonging to the mosque movement not only provided members with piety, but also provided a social safety net for men and women.    

Lamia Karim is the author of Microfinance and Its Discontents: Women in Debt in Bangladesh, University of Minnesota Press, 2011.